Empathic Cognitions Affected by Undetectable Social Chemosignals: An EEG Study on Visually Evoked Empathy for Pain in an Auditory and Chemosensory Context

Abstract

Reduction of mu activity within the EEG is an indicator of cognitive empathy and can be generated in response to visual depictions of others in pain. The current study tested whether this brain response can be modulated by an auditory and a chemosensory context. Participants observed pictures of painful and non-painful actions while pain associated and neutral exclamations were presented (Study 1, N = 30) or while chemosensory stimuli were presented via a constant flow olfactometer (Study 2, N = 22). Chemosensory stimuli were sampled on cotton pads while donors participated in a simulated job interview (stress condition) or cycled on a stationary bike (sport condition). Pure cotton was used as a control. The social chemosignals could not be detected as odors. Activity within the 8–13 Hz band at electrodes C3, C4 (mu activity) and electrodes O1, O2 (alpha-activity) was calculated using Fast-Fourier-Transformation (FFT). As expected, suppression of power in the 8–13 Hz band was stronger when painful as compared to non-painful actions were observed (Study 1, p = 0.020; Study 2, p = 0.005). In addition, as compared to the neutral auditory and chemosensory context, painful exclamations (Study 1, p = 0.039) and chemosensory stress signals (Study 2, p = 0.014) augmented mu-/alpha suppression also in response to non-painful pictures. The studies show that processing of social threat-related information is not dominated by visual information. Rather, cognitive appraisal related to empathy can be affected by painful exclamations and subthreshold chemosensory social information.

Chemosensory communication of aggression: women's fine-tuned neural processing of male aggression signals

“…However, similar but weaker activations appear in women in response to all sweat samples. It is suggested that these findings reflect the activation of the mirror neuron system, indicative of contagious effects of social emotions [41], and the inhibition of brain structures related to higherorder reasoning, such as executive functions (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, [42]). Brain activity specifically related to male aggression signals in women is supposedly located in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC, BA 8, LORETA difference maps).…”

You See What You Smell: Preferential Processing of Chemosensory Satiety Cues and Its Impact on Body Shape Perception

“…Thus, pre-attentive as well as attentional resources are activated, facilitating but not determining perceptual and response selection strategies. The phenomenon of chemosignals overriding the social information from the visual modality has already been demonstrated with chemosignals derived from emotion-related sweat, indicating a processing advantage for social information from the chemosensory over other modalities [ 22 , 56 ].…”

“…Several studies demonstrate that social chemosignals are able to change the information content of social visual signals in multimodal settings, suggesting a prominent role of chemosignals in social communication [ 19 ]. In line with the effects of anxiety and fear odor in easing the social visual perception of fear [ 20 ], reducing the perceptual acuity for cues of happiness [ 21 ], and increasing the perceptual relevance of neutral human actions [ 22 ], it is assumed that chemosensory satiety cues adjust the visual processing of underweight avatars and that chemosensory fasting cues adjust the visual processing of overweight avatars, each according to the chemosensory context.…”

Empatía: Medidas Cognitivas y Psicofisiológicas en Población Infantil

“…65 Por ejemplo, estudios de Perry, Ben-Ami, Lamm, Hoenen, Lubke y Pausse; & Decety; Héroux, Gray, Joubert, Be Konick, Blanchaette, Beaulieu y De Beaumont; Pelev-Avron, Goldstein, Yellinek, Weisman-Fogel y Shamay-Toory; y Nishimura, Ikeda y Higuchi [66][67][68] han logrado determinar que la supresión de la actividad mu dentro del EEG es un indicador de empatía cognitiva y puede generarse en respuesta a representaciones visuales de otros con dolor e injusticia social. [69][70][71] Estas ondas mu (8-12 hz) son un subtipo de ondas alfa que se registran en las áreas motoras del cerebro. Otros estudios que han examinado los rasgos de insensibilidad en la primera infancia, han realizado el análisis del componente de negatividad de ajuste (MMN) el cual es un componente PRE utilizado como índice del grado en que se perciben y procesan las diferencias en la valencia emocional.…”